Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/286

272 Power and Influence of the Senate. — As Caesar nominated half of the quaestors and exercised at will the power to admit and expel senators, he could always produce a majority in his favor and make the senate a subservient organ. In these ways he greatly decreased the dignity and prestige of the senate, and made it plain that so heterogeneous and dependent a body was simply a compromise with the past, and could not wield the controlling influence in the government, but would be as inferior to the executive as the republican senate had been superior. As the senate had not greatly altered its legal position since the royal period, Caesar met with slight legal difficulties in reducing it to the old position of a state council, or advisory body, which had been its ordinary function in the regal times. He made use of it mainly to confirm his regulations concerning independent states and rulers, but his decrees did not always correspond with the senatorial resolutions on which they were supposed to be based. He further humiliated the senate by usually summoning only the leading members or consulting only his confidential friends, who formed a sort of Jacksonian 'kitchen cabinet.'

Increase of the Patriciate. — Caesar had degraded the senate, and he humbled also the old republican aristocracy. The patriciate still existed as a close guild of hereditary members, but without any important privileges. As no new members were received (p. 35), it had decreased more and more, and at this time comprised some fifteen or sixteen clans (gentes), Caesar was authorized by a plebiscite to admit new members to the patriciate, and among others introduced his grandnephew Gaius Octavius. He may have taken this step partly to increase the patrician section of the senate (p. 33) and the number of candidates for the patrician priesthoods, or to reward his followers; but probably he desired to create a new monarchic nobility which